Thursday, January 27, 2011

In fact, because of Palin -- and only because of Palin's WTF phrasing -- people might actually remember something about this speech in the years to come.

MEMORIES: Sarah Palin's use of WTF triggered the memory of an old post from almost three years ago. I was very confused at the time, but now it makes sense: North Carolina does not want you to "Win The Future".

Friday, January 21, 2011

Via Hot Air, here is part of Congressman Steve Cohen’s reaction/defense/apology for his “I so did not call Republicans Nazis” use of the term Nazis to describe Republicans:

“While I regret that anything I said has created an opportunity to distract from the debate about health care for 32 million Americans, I want to be clear that I never called Republicans Nazis. Instead, the reference I made was to the greatest propaganda master of all time. Propaganda, which is called “messaging” today, can be true or false. In this case, the message is false."

CAMBRIDGE, Md. — House Democrats kicked off their annual retreat here with a vow to improve the flawed messagingpropaganda that contributed to the loss of their majority last fall.

The down-sized Democratic Caucus is meeting for three days at the glitzy Hyatt Regency resort on the shores of the Chesapeake, with the goal of figuring out what went wrong in 2010 and how the party can position itself on policy and politics for the next two years.

President Obama and Vice President Biden will be in Cambridge on Friday to address Democratic lawmakers, who will also hear from economists, messagepropaganda gurus and current and former colleagues. More than a half dozen panels will be devoted or related to messagingpropaganda, underscoring the importance of boosting the party’s communications with the public....“I said Madam Speaker, the problem with Democrats is we never give the public the chance to savor our victories,” [Rep. Xavier] Becerra [D.-Calif.] said, as Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the assistant leader, nodded in agreement. “What we didn’t do was take the time to do tap-dances about what we had just done, but we did the work of the people.”

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Dig just a bit deeper, and you will see that 0.2% of that drop (or half the total drop) was from a decrease in the "participation rate" from 64.5 to 64.3 of the population. So half of the good news reflects that people have dropped out of the work force and have given up looking for work.

December's unemployment rate was released this morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. U-3 unemployment dropped from 9.8% last month to 9.4% this month. The U-6 number dropped from 17% to 16.7%. Only 103,000 jobs were added, however, which indicates that the drop in unemployment was more due to people leaving the labor force than getting jobs.

The nation’s unemployment rate dropped four-tenths of a point to 9.4% in December but the number of jobs added fell short of expectations. ... Also, the civilian labor force participation rate did drop to 64.3%, which indicates that people are still leaving the work force rather than rejoining it.

People are dropping out of the work force? Leaving the labor force? Giving up looking for work?

Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

Troubling.

Attention all discouraged workers: Obama requires that you not be. Get back to work.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

In his speech today, John Boehner showed himself to be among the most impressive figures on our political landscape, and he did it by being that rarest of things in politics: a humble human being.

His opening ad-lib quieting thunderous applause – “It’s still just me” – should be an instructional moment in public behavior in our celebrity culture. Can you imagine Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Barack Obama or even, alas, Sarah Palin saying such a thing with the authenticity Boehner clearly had at such a moment?

I’ve had occasion a few times recently to go back and revisit my piece in American Thinker during the election of 2008 on then-candidate Obama’s ego. After reading about Boehner’s humility-laden speech and approach as described by Simon, it reminded me again about this particular part:

A campaign willing to showcase this large an ego without any evidence of modesty or shame is underway. Obama's last gasp effort at combating the notion that he considers himself more highly than he ought came in his victory speech in St. Paul upon securing enough delegates to claim the Democratic nomination:

"The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility."

Give Obama points for associating himself with the word "profound" while seeming to claim humility.

But even that humility lasted all of a few seconds, when he quickly shed it with this:

"I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when...the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

A man who brags that his humility is profound is not humble. A man who claims certainty that his nomination is the moment when the entire planet will begin healing is not humble.

Boehner, on the other hand, didn’t talk about himself being humble. Genuinely humble people rarely do. Boehner simply spoke humbly. Falsely humble people rarely do.

There are those who might claim that Boehner is the rare person to do so. And since he's a politician, I'm willing to evaluate Boehner according to his actions going forward, rather than drawing conclusions at this pont.

But as for Obama, the conclusions I may have prematurely arrived at during the campaign have since been judged correct by his actions over the past two years as president.